


Game Play: Japan

by SashinaLash



Series: Wordplay Fic Challenge 2020 [5]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Board Games, Harry in Japan, Japanese things, M/M, Songwriter Harry, Songwriter Louis, Songwriting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25690084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SashinaLash/pseuds/SashinaLash
Summary: Songwriting is just a big old game.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Series: Wordplay Fic Challenge 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1818505
Comments: 18
Kudos: 21
Collections: Prompt 5.4: Board





	Game Play: Japan

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a Wordplay prompt challenge for the prompt "board". To read the amazing fics that were written by the others on this prompt, [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/board), and to see all fics written as part of the challenge (including years 1-3), [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wordplay_fic_challenge/works). You can also find the masterpost for this year’s challenge [here](https://wordplayfics.tumblr.com/post/622306139518926848/wordplay-2020-every-week-for-five-weeks-a-prompt).
> 
> I'm [SashinaLash](https://sashinalash.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.

All the words Harry associates with Japan—the ones that have made it into his poems, the ones that have started and ended his paragraphs, the ones sandwiched between his em-dashes, the ones given paragraphs of their own, even the ones he’s swept away—all of them are quiet, somehow. Words of stillness. You can see them, breathe them, paint them, write them. Even the embarrassing failed haikus—or maybe especially them—cannot be anything but. Seventeen syllables that could never be _Kiwi_. Harry’s journal—rough ochre leather cover, hand-bound and tied up with a leather lace, fills up rapidly away from home.

_[Remember: Harry writes the calmest words in Japan]_

Looking up from the low table, Harry almost feels the shaft of cool, too early (for Louis) light which slants across from the corridor for a special half hour at 6am, before it is swallowed by the mountain. The long fresh crisscross shadow of the woven floor lamp—blended into the texture of the tatami mat surface—almost reaches his crossed legs, and his as-yet-undrunk coffee sits in a bluish-grey ceramic cup on the polished tabletop in front of him, offering promise. Today’s a starting-a-new-journal-day.

***

There is something about morning writing that has always appealed to Harry. _It’s a fucking cliché, darling_. Yes, but blank verse on a blank page; acoustic guitar; a simple discipline. Works less so for words, but for melodies, yes: the writing in shifts slash matcha tea slash yoga slash meditation days have been fruitful. And the Japanese ones, the days with the diffused light through _shoji_ , a breeze through the red pines, his favourite. _Nihon: the land of the rising sun_.

_All tokens on Go. Dice not yet rolled. Clean slate / even footing / blank canvas. No-one’s ahead yet. Everyone can still win. No errors in judgement have been made, no opportunities lost, no friendships ruined. Harry—always the ship—rolls a 5/3 combination. Euston Road—light blue—is not a bad start, he thinks; not the best, but he’ll take it. Start small._

*

Night-time writing is different. Harry knows precisely what flavour of chaotic prose emanates from too-late phone-overheated-from-post-karaoke-Facetime midnight coffee nights. From the restlessness of more than a fortnight alone half-tangled in foreign-shaped bedding. It has its time, and its very-much-not-Japan place. Even when it happens in Japan (and it happens in Japan; it _especially_ happens in Japan).

_No-one ever really found out about the drunk chess of the OTRA era. Harry knew that was just as well. The knots they tied themselves in: Louis pulling every Capricornian trick (or non-trick) in the book of SBB-as-grandmaster, while Harry flipped pawns with a mermaid’s tail. And just as well it was always drunk chess (he’s tired already, alright?) as Harry’s feigned hangover sleep-ins let Louis polish his chess trophies in peace._

_*_

The arrival of Louis brings another sort of warm chaos. A bunch of keys on the small bronze table near the door. Luggage dragged roughly across the floor. An unexpected knife dropped in a sink. Louis brings art and words, too—always—but noisily. Harry always feels Louis stores up everything, waiting to return to him, to them: the poetry from the plane, a few notes on a BA napkin, recounted film snippets, overheard bar conversations, 1990s song lyrics, sometimes touches. Louis brings life like fresh batteries.

_It’s almost like a comfy rom-com: six suspects, nine rooms, six weapons. Harry used to like playing Miss Scarlett; she felt glamorous against Robin’s dowdy Reverend Green. He ‘let’ Gemma play Mrs Peacock, like a prize. A cosy trudge from room to room; poke your nose in, nothing to see here, do a little tidy up, solve a little murder as Boxing Day relaxation. Preferred resolution: SBB, in the ballroom, with a dagger, of course._

*

The words come though, settling on the page regardless, the ink drying just so, and are Harry’s. Sometimes in an order that just works, first time lucky, from his brain to the lyric sheet. Other times it’s tangled: much shuffling / much fiddling / works / doesn’t work / come back when the stars are better aligned maybe? Like sending a kid off to daycare, it’s a wrench to his heart (but that’s showbiz baby). In the end it’s just notes and letters in one particular permutation. That’s all. Looks nice, sounds nice.

 _Harry lives for the double triple-word-score. The spanning word. Done well it can score into the three figures. His best ever was against Anne; he’s still troubled by an occasional pang of guilt. But with Louis, it’s no holds barred; only a fool would hold back against Louis. When_ Louis _hits the jackpot, you hear about it for a week. It’s never the luck of the draw. The more it feels like bare-knuckle fighting, though, the more Harry loves it._

***

It’s all about creation. Something amazing from literally nothing. Harry thinks that’s why Japan works. The concept of _ma_ : the celebration of what is not, of negative space, of emptiness, of voids. Making space for creation; for just being. And it’s not that he wants to use the act of creation to make stuff—sounds, words, noise, colour, texture—to fill that space. That would be— _no._

But in London, in LA, in a soulless hotel room in Illinois, maybe it’s a little antidote for some curse or other. His curse, Louis’ curse, your curse, dear reader.

Maybe it all helps.

We’ll be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so so much to everyone who has given such lovely feedback about my [previous Wordplay fics](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1818505), and especially to all my lovely Tumblr (and real life) pals: thank you darling cheerleaders; you have no idea how much I value you all.  
>   
> There is a [fic post](https://sashinalash.tumblr.com/post/625444604186181633/wordplay-fic-challenge-2020-sashinalash-week) on Tumblr you can reblog if you enjoyed reading. Thank you!


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